Watch: Everything You Need to Know About Butchering a Turkey

Once you’ve properly butchered any type of poultry, you can pretty much butcher, well, any type of poultry. Turkey, chicken, Cornish hen, pheasant—they all have the same structure (or “morphology,” to employ a biology term). The muscle usage of a duck may differ from that of a chicken, but they still share the same parts—breasts, wings, legs, etc.—and those parts can be removed in the same way.

Here we show you how to break down a bird in order to separate its wings, wishbone, crown, and legs for great presentation (and to preserve that all-important oyster meat). We demonstrate here with a turkey, which, due to its size, makes for a good demo bird. But, again, the method works for the little guys too. After some practice, you may never buy pre-portioned poultry again.